Can you see her tongue planted firmly in her cheek?
Rachel Held Evans would be the first to throw that scarf out and cut her hair short,
but a literalist reading of the Bible says she can't if she wants to be a godly
wife. I sure hope her husband, Dan, prays with his hands lifted up . .
. wait. Nobody in my church requires any of that stuff. So how
do we interpret passages from the Bible that talk about this?
It's called hermeneutics: the rules by
which we analyze scripture so that we can then apply the commands, principles,
and timeless truths found within it. Scholars have disagreed for centuries on
the best way to do hermeneutics. And there are several steps involved. But
biblical scholars do continue to uphold one hermeneutical rule: context
is king.
Corinth Had Issues
Let's address the issue in Rachel's photo here: The
city of Corinth was well-known in the first century for promiscuity, being the
center of worship to the god of wine, Dionysus (Bacchus, to the Romans). Worshipers,
men and women alike, wore long hair down and curled—which suggested the married
women were available and the men were looking to “hook up” with
boys. Knowing this can help modern readers understand Paul's reasoning
later in the passage when he says that a woman’s “hair is given to her for a
covering” (v. 15) and that it’s a disgrace for men to have long hair (v.
14).
Corinthian morality was, shall we say, lacking.
Earlier in his instructions, Paul addresses this by giving a counter-cultural
corrective: “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is good for
a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.’ But because of the temptation
to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each women her own
husband.”
Essentially he encourages them to be
self-controlled, even to the point of remaining single if they already were,
for the sake of the gospel.
Ephesus Had Different Issues
Contrast that with Paul's words to the church in
Ephesus. This town worshipped Artemis, an independent, strong goddess who
emphasized abstinence for men and women alike. But writing to
readers in Ephesus, Paul encouraged each member of the family unit: wives to
submit, husbands to love, children to obey, masters to be fair and just
(Ephesians 5–6). In 1 Timothy, written to the pastor of the church in Ephesus,
we see admonitions to young widows to marry and have children (5:14), in
accordance with Caesar’s marriage laws.
In both letters, Paul directs believers
to counter-cultural behaviors that honor God. But the behaviors
differed depending on the culture in which they lived. The point was to reflect
God's character, love others, serve the Kingdom. Believers in different places,
facing different influences, would follow different pathways to that end-goal.
Culture dictated a lot of the specifics on how to shine as lights to the
world.
Cultural or Universal Truth?
Hermeneutics is hard, folks. Some truths are
universal—Christ died for the forgiveness of sins; every person is a sinner;
certain behaviors are consistently condemned throughout scripture across all
cultures; justice, mercy and humility always honor God . . . . So we can't
dismiss everything as "cultural, so it doesn't apply to me."
Knowing how to parse the variety of cultural
references to find the meaning intended by the writer takes time, study,
prayer, and wisdom. Our opinions are not enough. And the truths intended by the
biblical writers are timeless. In this case, wives should avoid dishonoring
husbands by presenting themselves as available to men, and men should avoid
dishonoring Christ by looking available to boys.
So when Rachel pokes fun at some people's literal
application of 1 Corinthians 11:4, she's really asking about their hermeneutic.
Do women in 2012 need to cover their heads in order to be godly? What other
behaviors need to correlate with first-century Greco-Roman (or Old Testament
Hebrew) culture? Or is that missing the point?
Thanks to Sandra Glahn for sharing her sources on first-century Corinthian and Ephesian life:
Baugh, S. M. “Cult Prostitution in New Testament Ephesus: A Reappraisal.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 42, no. 3 (1999): 443–60.
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